*HP dv2z Owners Lounge*

Is it a netbook? Is it a notebook? It's both!

 

has anyone tried installing ubuntu 9.10?

does it still have the audio problems from the previous versions?

 

What the... are we the only 3 on this site with this notebook? It's a freakin netbook on steroids for godsakes!

 

OMG - I just found this Owner's Lounge ... Yes - I installed the Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix, temporarily, on my dv2z and it ran very well. I really liked the fact that it has an on-screen brightness meter. I wound up formating the drive and re-installing it as a Vista32/Win 7 dual-booter though. I found dv2 batteries on sale earlier this week - for $52 - on HP.com so I ordered one. Win 7 runs very well - but I'm still not too happy with the battery life ...

Edited to add - I have the dv2z-1110US - which has the single-core Neo - the proc spends a lot of time maxed out when I check the Task Manager ...

 

Yeah, batterly life definitely needs to be better. I have the single core too and the processor is usually maxed out on idle for some stupid reason and the fan is constantly blowing. Not really sure why that happens but it definitely can hold its own against the larger sized notebooks and whoops every netbooks' in terms of performance.

 

I just picked up the dv2-1116ax with the neo x2 l335. I'm loving it so far, except for the heat and battery life issues.

I've been reading about undervolting here and I'm curious to know if anyone has tried it with this processor. The rightmark cpu clock utility is unfamiliar with this processor, so I'm not sure if the guide will work (I haven't tried yet). I figure this could be a solution to getting this little beast of a machine running cooler and longer.

Also have not installed ubuntu yet, but I plan to get multibooting in the near future.

Cheers

 

I'm actually curious about after market 9 cell batteries such as this: http://cgi.ebay.com/7800mah-9Cell-N...temQQimsxZ20091105?IMSfp=TL091105199004r38402

It should hold more of a charge so the battery life should be better. I've bought aftermarket batteries before and they actually do last longer than the official ones. Just make sure you're careful in selecting a reputable vendor!

 

I be here as well!

I may have only the single core version, but it's enough for my mobile needs. Plays HD flash video very well and can easily play full HD movies. dv2-1144ca

Cheers!

 

I've got the dual core L625 (same as yours but full cache). RMClock works pretty much out of the box despite these being "unrecognized cpus" Here are my voltages:

4.0 - 0.725v
4.5 - 0.750v
8.0 - 0.875v

Not nearly as good as the numbers people seem to get down to with the single core version but that is to be expected. Wattage is down ~4 at full load (down to about 38 - 41 watts) and down about ~2 at idle (down to 19 - 21 watts). So about 10% less. The chassis of this laptop is designed to dissipate some of the generated heat which can make gaming uncomfortable. Undervolting seems to help this somewhat, but that might just be placebo or wishful thinking.

 

I'm here too, had mine about 3 months now.. Got the dual core L625 too. Gnerma, are those voltages you are running for Win 7 ? I'm running 64 bit version of win7 and not having much luck with finding stable voltages.... mind you I don't seem to have the same battery / heat issues others have been complaining about either.

Best mod I did was bought the internal Gobi WWAN module (and antenna). Meant I've been able to use 3G everywhere while trravelling. I just pick up a sim card (usually free) when I visit a new country, top up and voila. Fitting internal antenna was a bit of a pain, but all good now.

Anyone know how we can fit internal GPS ?

 

I don't know if there are battery or heat issues per-say. Just the general perception that these are too hot, and the battery life is too short.

Yes I am using Windows 7 x64 but what OS you're using shouldn't affect such things. The first thing I would ask is, have you stress tested the system at stock volts? Perhaps your instability is not the result of too low voltage but something else. Try to eliminate variables.

 

Hi Gnerma, Yep, the issue was def rmclock for me. I did have a problem with the DV hanging periodically, but that was due to the old wlan driver I was using, since updating to latest driver it's all OK. I'll try again with your voltages though...

 

i haven't found stable voltages for all my multipliers yet...after 3 weeks
however, ive had no problems with 0.6875V for the 4.0X multiplier which i usually use since i dont need that much power atm. been testing it out for a month now. all gd.

i suspect a high voltage is still needed for the 8.0X multiplier but haven't had time to test it further. let me know if u guys have achieved stable voltages for all the multipliers.

i have the L335 + ATI HD3410 model.

M

 

Has anybody gotten hardware flash video decoding working on the 3410?

 

Apparently the Flash 10.1 beta is supposed to do it but it's not really doing anything different for me, hopefully the final version will do it. The flash hardware acceleration is the next logical step and I'm really excited about the possibility of streaming lagless youtube 720p HD with this 3410 of ours.

 

hi guys,

do u know if dv2 supports SDHC Class 10?

cheers,
M

 

Plug it in and find out?

 

gd idea, but i havent bought one yet. would be a complete waste of money if it doesnt work.

 

Then see if you can find it in a store, and pop in your card, see what happens?

 

I bought the DV2-1030US and I'm pretty disappointed that the 3410 can't do the GPU-enhanced Flash 10.1 playback yet. The politics surrounding mobile GPU drivers is pretty ridiculous.

HP only has the 9.10 drivers at the moment and ATI doesn't have official 9.11 drivers for the 3410 yet. I DL'ed the 9.11 Desktop Radeon drivers, then modded them using the DriverHeaven's ATI Mobility Modder ( http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool.php ), but it still stutters with HD Flash video. It can still play WoW at over 60fps though... ;-)

There is hope, however. ATI is unleashing their 9.12 drivers on December 17th and hopefully it will be designed to work much better with the Flash 10.1 beta. Making the 9.12 drivers work with the 3410 will be a whole other matter though...

 

I am tempted to get one of these things but the battery life seems to be very poor.

 

Theoretically we should be able to stream 1080p just fine with the hardware we have since we can play 1080p h.264 offline using the GPU, but I don't think we'll be able to do it online unless Adobe includes official support, and it looks like we've been left in the dust at least for now. Official support exists for the following:

* ATI Radeon™ HD 4000, HD 5700 and HD 5800 series graphics
* ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics (and higher)
* ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 integrated graphics (and higher)
* ATI FirePro™ V3750, V5700, V7750, V8700 and V8750 graphics accelerators (and later)

I don't know why they wouldn't include the mobility 3xxx series as well since AMD/ATI's just released a bunch of new laptops with "VISION" GPU branding-this is a very, very low end discrete graphics card, an ATI Radeon Mobility 3200 with 128MB VRAM. It doesn't seem fair when you learn that Adobe already has support for the ION platform in the flash 10.1 beta.

 

Hmmn, I can get 5 hours from mine, so it's not THAT bad. That's in mixed use mode with wifi on.

 

Quick question on the HP Quick Launch buttons..... on win7x64
When I change volume using the keyboard an on screen display shows a slider. However when I change the brightness I do not get any sliders etc displayed (although it does change the brightness)

Just wondering if anyone can confirm whether this should be shown on screen too ?

ps I have the latest HP quick launch drivers for win7x64

 

You don't really need the HP crapware for that, the function key alternate functions work fine without them straight in win7.

 

I know it all works OK, I'm just being pedantic I like the onscreen slider display to show when I press the keys

 

I would appreciate any Canucks that have a handle on where I can pick a DV2 with the Turion Neo x2, 4GB RAM and 3410 graphics to holler at me.

Thank you!!!!

EDIT: Or even a listing of the models that have the turion neo x2 with 3410 graphics?

 

Has anyone been able to solve the vertical black bars when playing games at less than native resolution problem?

 

I'm not sure what you mean. Are the games you're playing 4:3 only? There will be "vertical black bars" on 4:3 only games to maintain aspect ratio. That is a good thing. Get specific, what are you playing and at what resolution?

 

It doesn't matter what I'm playing. Anytime I play a game at less than native resolution where the aspect ratio doesn't match my screen's original aspect ratio, I get vertical or horizontal black bars. You don't consider it a problem so there is no problem for you, but I don't want to only use 1/3 of my screen to play a game, I want to use my whole screen, and the useless ATI control center doesn't fix it.

 

The black bars or "mattes" are there to maintain the proper aspect ratio of the game, movie etc. Using the whole screen in these cases will stretch or distort the image. Most desktop LCD's offer choices for such things. But I can't see a way to adjust it on the dv2 with modified cat 9.11s. So you may be out of luck.

As I said though, the way this laptop behaves is optimal. Aspect ratio is maintained but the image is scaled to fit as much of the screen as possible. You might try some 3rd party tools like Powerstrip or ATi Tray Tools to work around this.

 

With Adobe 10.1?

Played around with some files and the 9.11 drivers and yeah...think I might have gotten it working.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zvCUmeoHpw

My single core dv2 can play that completely smooth. Although the CPU usage hovers between 80-100%. I've also got an option for Hardware acceleration in my adobe flash option when I right-click and settings on a flash file.

 

Can you tell us how exactly you did it? Mobility modder doesn't list the 3410 as a supported gfx card.

 

I just followed the sticky in the Graphics section of the board.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=258626

 

I'm kind of disappointed HP didn't continue this series of notebooks. So far it's been one of the best I've ever owned. Size, weight, and performance are above satisfactory, even with the single core.

 

I agree, I finally found one specced close to what I wanted and pulled the trigger. Should be here in about a week, Dual core athlon Neo with the HD3410 graphics. It will replace my 4710s and my 8710w as my unit of choice for hauling around. Looks like Hp is going to fill the 12 inch ultraportable void with the Tm2 tablet, but fully configured with the 4550 graphics it will be at least double what I just paid for this little Neo x2 gem.

 

I agree that the dv2 was a good laptop for its time, but I've just discovered the Alienware M11X, which is a 11.6inch gaming machine with a CULV Core 2 Duo SU7300 and Nvidia 335m and I'll be getting one of those. It's still a true Alienware machine, with the backlit keyboard and LED lighting, but in a netbook size, for less than $1000USD. I just thought I'd like to let you fellow dv2 owners know about a machine you might be inerested in.

Also, my dv2's fan seems to ramp up when I'm streaming flash video, but I haven't experienced any performance boost from hardware acceleration so the 3410's still not supported by the latest flash 10.1 beta.

 

I saw that but it's a bit thick for my taste. I guess I'm too spoiled by the 1 inch thickness of the dv2 and my "gaming computer" which is my Macbook pro 15 inch. I am still somewhat considering the Alienware but more than likely, I'll stick with the DV2 as the machine I take with me on business trips because of how light it is.

 

Guys, there's a $100 cashback on the DV2z in my country, I don't know about the serial number, but it has the Neo x2 L335 and the 3410 discrete graphics, for a total of US$699.

I've been eyeing the DV2z for quite a while to replace my Asus N10j. Reasons being need something more powerful and have a bigger screen than 10" but still thin and light enough, doesn't care much about battery as for me 3 hours is enough. I travel a lot, but I'm comfortable to plug in to juice my notebook anywhere and mostly I do 2 hours presentation at max.

One thing irks me though, and it's about the heat this notebook generates. A client of mine claims the heat from his DV2 (MV-40) actually causes the hard disk to go bonkers... How bonkers I don't know as he didn't say specifics, he just told me there's problem with the heat and the hard disk. He sold the DV2 in just under 2 months. On a side note, this client of mine has a little bit tendency to blow things up out of proportion, but considering the bad reputation AMD notebooks are in my country, it has some credential to his remark. Acer Ferrari line sales here flops like it's a disease or something. Nobody wants to buy it.

Now considering the L335 TDP is 18W compared to MV-40 15W (more TDP = more heat right?) is there any chance I should worry about the DV2z? Also, is the DV2z powerful enough to run Windows 7 XP mode? I occasionally play Tropico (the original one) and Sid Meier's Pirates on my N10j. Read on many publication, the XP mode is a resource hog as it creates its own virtual machine. Just wondering if the L335 and the built in 2GB of memory can boot the XP mode.

Thanks in advance.

 

I as well as many others in this thread have the MV-40 and we haven't reported any hard drive issues, so maybe it's just a problem with his unit. I haven't tried XP mode as I haven't really needed to use it(Right click on a program, compatibility tab)

But do remember that the dv2 only has what I would describe as reasonable graphics power. Definitely better than integrated graphics like the Nvidia 9400M/ATI Radeon "Vision" 3200, capable of playing older/low-end games, but still an entry-level card.

Here is a list of GPUs and their benchmarks so you can compare apples to oranges(higher is better) but the 9300M GS has a score of 155 compared to the ATI Radeon's 3410's score of 102 with the same amount of VRAM. You might want to look at getting the Alienware M11X(11.6 inch screen, Nvidia 335M, Core 2 Duo SU7300, less than $1000) or one of the ASUS UL series thin-and-lights for a larger screen and better keyboard.

 

Thanks for the input, I suppose the games that I mention shouldn't require a blazing speed GPU as it was fairly old games. I'm a little bit iffy with data from videobenchmark.net, namely because I'm not familiar with their benchmarking software. I refer mainly to notebookcheck.net to judge theoretical capability of notebooks graphic subsystem. At least they are using 3Dmark which is more popular than Passmark (or it's I that's misinformed). However data from either websites concurs that the 3410 performance is indeed below the 9300M GS.

The other alternatives you mention seems great, but my budget only extends to $800 at max. Alienware isn't available here, and although the UL series is coming, the word on the street is that it will be priced around $1000-$1200. Asus here has the tendency to max out their offerings to fit with their premium strategy.

I was going to pick Acer Aspire 4736, but I'm terribly spoiled with N10 compactness/lightness, and everything else that fits with my wants list are either out of my budget or the same ol' netbooks (albeit with better battery life).

 

Midi_Amp what country are you typing from?

 

The Asus N10 is a good choice in the field of netbooks/small laptops with discrete graphics, and outperforms both the dv2 and Nvidia ION based netbooks, if you have the N10 with 512MB of VRAM and not 256MB. Before I got the dv2, I was considering getting it, but the version in the local retailer Staples only had 256MB of VRAM and that decreased its performance to levels below the 3410. At the time I bought my dv2(September 2009) it was the most graphically powerful laptop under 13 inches and $1000.

There also seems to be a HUGE difference in user experience between 10-inch and 12-inch screens-10-inch seems to me to be the ideal netbook size, and you can comfortably carry it around open in one hand, but with the dv2 if you attempt to do the same your hand will be tired quickly. The extra screen real estate is also very noticeable, for people who care about screen real estate. Given a choice between two laptops, one 10-inch and one 12-inch, with the same specs, price, and the same good graphics card in both, I would choose the 10-inch. IMO the Alienware M11x will pwn all sub 13-inch netbooks/laptops in every category except thickness.

 

I am looking for a small machine with discrete graphics and have been looking at the DV2 as you can get it for a good price. Anybody know what the comparison of performance v something like the Asus 1201n would be? how about compared to the N10?

Thanks in advance.

 

I'm from Indonesia, and it seems I wrongly misquote the UL30vt price, it's actualy $819. The $1000+ price quote I got from a dealer citing that it's a dual core CULV and has a discrete graphics. The UL30vt official pricing just came out late last week.

I have the 256 MB one, is it so that the 256 MB version of 9300m GS is inferior to 3410? Because the data on both gpubenchmark and notebookcheck doesn't have any info regarding the performance of the 256 MB, it just shows the 9300m GS goes blazing fast even faster than the G102m. Still though, it's kind of useless, the graphic is willing but the bottleneck seems to be on the processor itself.

I have no qualm with the extra screen real estate, in fact I eye the DV2z because of the bigger screen but still having a similar girth with my current N10j. As of last month I got a part time gig as a lecturer, and boy do I have some tough time making multi content slide show pages on Excel. The 10" screen is just too darn small and playing back some flash files bogs the system down quite a lot, even with the gpu flash acceleration turns on. Perhaps the background apps I opened at the same time put some strain on the system.

I tried using my father's spare Acer Timeline 3810T, but again I'm terribly spoiled by my N10j petite size.

 

for that price range, check out the Asus UL30VT =D

 

Got my DV2 shipped to Canada from Australia today. The ebay seller is a real cow though and she ripped me off.

I love the laptop though, light responsive, excellent display. I really hope I don't have to send it back over a dispute.

 

I've been messing around with it and I can't get it to work. Could you be so kind as to give more precise instructions or upload the modified driver to mediafire or something?

 

Hey guys, just found the lounge here. I bought my DV2 about 6 months ago. I haven't really tried too many games on it yet. Wondering if anyone here has tried Fallout 3 on there's yet?

I'm still very happy with it. I got Windows XP working on it, just had a problem with the SMBus controller. It would restart itself instead of turning off when I shut it down. XP, Vista or 7, they all seem to run quite well on it.

 

I've played WoW on mine quite a bit, getting roughly 25fps in major populated areas like Dalaran which is not too bad. I could turn down some candy and get better framerates but I haven't bothered it is completely playable, Only other game I've played on it is Torchlight, but that can run on an atom notebook with intel graphics so. I'm hoping the Catalyst 10.3 due in March will take care of the Adobe stuff, with the Stock Cats from HP I notice no stuttering anyway while watching Youtube, without having to enable hardware acceleration.

I have Windows 7 64bit running on mine. The only real problem I had was with the Cisco VPN client s/w. Virtual PC and Windows XP mode took care of that though. As a matter of fact, I am extremely happy with the performance of XP Mode on the DV2.

I have been waiting for a back ordered 80GB G2 Intel x25-m SSD, also picked up an antenna kit for the WWAN option and the unlocked HP Qualcomm card. I also have the 802.11n Broadcom WiFi card and bluetooh module. Seeing as how I will need to strip the unit down to install the newer WWAN/Wifi antenna kit, I am holding off on doing any of the upgrades until the WWAN card and SSD arrive then do them all in one fell-swoop.